Josh Elliott is fed up with overpaid CEOs. As the owner of Thyme and Seasons, a Hamden, Conn., natural-foods market with 40 employees, he says he could never justify pocketing hundreds of times more pay than his employees.

“I’m very much a capitalist,” Elliott told me in an interview. “But there need to be limits.”

Skyrocketing CEO pay and inequality last year motivated this 32-year-old businessman to launch a successful bid for a seat in the Connecticut General Assembly. Elliott hit back hard on the campaign trail against right-wing claims about high taxes driving wealthy job creators out of his state.

“This is not an issue of over-taxation — it’s an issue of taxing the wrong people and the wrong entities,” he told the New Haven Register. “When the middle class has to subsidize huge corporations like Walmart that criminally underpay their workers, the narrative that we are overtaxed ought to be outed as ludicrous.”

Since taking office, Representative Elliott has co-sponsored several bills aimed at narrowing our economic divide, including two that directly address the CEO pay problem.

One of these bills mirrors a Portland, Ore., law enacted last December that imposes a tax penalty on publicly traded corporations with CEOs making more than 100 times their typical worker pay.

These laws don’t set a ceiling on how much corporations can pay their executives. But they do provide an incentive to rein in excess CEO pay and lift up workers at the bottom end. They can also generate significant revenue for urgent needs like funding pre-school programs or fixing roads and bridges.

Elliott’s other bill would use the power of the public purse to reduce pay disparities. If enacted, companies with CEO-worker pay ratios of more than 100 to 1 wouldn’t qualify for state subsidies and grants.

That would help ensure taxpayer dollars are used wisely. Research has shown that narrower pay gaps make businesses more effective by boosting employee morale and reducing turnover rates.

Elliott pointed out that he’s able to go to the state capital in Hartford four times a week when the General Assembly is in session because he trusts his managers to do a good job running the market in his absence. “You need to have good employees to make money,” he told me.

While efforts to narrow CEO-worker pay gaps are spreading around the country, Republicans in Washington are working to undercut them.

How? By killing a federal disclosure law requiring corporations to report the gap between their CEO and median worker pay. This data, scheduled to become available in early 2018, would make the kinds of policies Elliott is promoting much easier to administer.

But overpaid CEOs — and their lobbyists — want to throw up as many obstacles as they can. The massive Financial CHOICE Act, which just passed a House committee, would eliminate the pay-ratio disclosure regulation, along with loosening other regulations on big Wall Street banks. It could come up for a full House vote soon.

But as the debate shifts, Elliott is confident that bold proposals for change will eventually gain traction.

“The conservative narrative is that business owners are the job creators,” he told me. “But if the CEOs and owners of capital have unlimited potential for their own compensation, they’re just taking money away from their employees. And that’s a system that is simply unsustainable.”

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is a co-editor of Inequality.org. @Anderson_IPS

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"Smoke" by Lisa Oppenheim

"Smoke'' (installation view, two-channel video, looped), by LISA OPPENHEIM, in the "Film as Medium and Metaphor'' show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Mass.

"The parody trailer by comedy network Above Average explores a world in which the dedicated Spotlight team finishes their work on sexual abuse in the Catholic church and investigates what else is wrong with Boston: everything."

Newport

'Better Angels: Firefighters of 9/11,' by Dawn Howkinson

'Better Angels: Firefighters of 9/11,' by Dawn Howkinson Siebel, at the Wood Museum, Springfield, Mass through July 10, 2016

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"Saturday, March 21 (1965). Afternoon. Taken on my arrival in Selma {Ala, at the Brown Chapel area," by JAMES H. BARKER

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"Consumable Sugarhouse,''

"Consumable Sugarhouse,'' in Norwich, Vt.

“A sap run is the sweet good-bye of winter”

"Window 60 Autumn,'' by Maira Reinbergs

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"Hydrogen 1,'' by Sarah Hulsey, in her show "Schemata"

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An arrogant plutocrat for the masses; bees imperiled

How curious that middle- and lower-income Americans who feel with some justification that they have been treated with disdain by an increasingly arrogant and selfish plutocracy turn for leadership to a sleazy, arrogant and narcissistic member of the plutocracy.

"Frog Prince,'' by MAXFIELD PARRISH, at the show "The Power of Print,'' at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H., through Jan. 10. Mr Parrish did much of his work in New England at the artists' colony in Cornish, N.H.

"Whale's Jaw, Dogtown,''

"Whale's Jaw, Dogtown,'' from the archives of the Cape Ann Museum, in Gloucester.

Mornings in Little Compton

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

Mornings in Little Compton

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

Colored Stone History

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

"Unihemispheric Existence''

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"The Market Is a Snake,'' by MICHAEL YEFKO, in the show "Further on Down the Yellow Brick Road,'' at Hera Gallery, in Wakefield, R.I., through June 20. In it he explores "temporal aspects of geometry.''

"Physicality'' (photography, oil, narrative text and resin on panel), by SHERRY KARVER, in her show "Objects of Affection,'' at Lanoue Gallery, Boston, through Oct. 31.

"Dream Work of Thomas Street''

(acrylic on panel), by SHAWN KENNEY

"Karl with Honeybears"

"Karl with Honeybears'' (oil on canvas), by DAVID PETTIBONE, at the Corey Daniels Gallery,

"smoke"

"Smoke'' (installation view, two-channel video, looped), by LISA OPPENHEIM, in the "Film as Medium and Metaphor'' show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Mass.

"Elevation'' (acryllic on canvas), by Diane Novetsky, in her show 'EARTHSHIFTER

"Nero''

"Nero'' (Marquina marble), by PAUL BLOCH

"New Orleans Sketchbook, March 1-17, 2007, Lower Ninth Ward

"New Orleans Sketchbook, March 1-17, 2007, Lower Ninth Ward,'' by JEFFREY MARSHALL, in the show "Katrina Then and Now: Artists as Witness,'' through Oct. 10, at Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester.

"Siberia Imagined and Reimagined"

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"Arcology'' (detail; gouache and Lascaux acrylics on archival papers), by Ilona Anderson, in her show "Arcology,'' at Kingston Gallery, Boston.

"Resonance: book in time II''

"Resonance: book in time II'' show at Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, Mass., Dec. 6-Jan. 16. It's a collection of individual and collaborative artists' books by Ann Forbush, Ania Gilmore and Annie Zeybekoglu.

"Civil Rights Marchers Walking from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on Monday, March 23, 1965,'' photo by JAMES BARKER, in the show "Through the Lens of History: Selma & Civil Rights at the Grand Circle Gallery,'' Boston, through January.